Matt and Katie wedding homily

A match made in heaven, a match made in Indianapolis, a match made on the volleyball court!

The story of Tobit: just when a person has nothing else to hold on to except the Lord, and they abandon themselves to his plan, he provides us with all that they need!  This in some sense, is how Matt and Katie experienced things. Leading up to meeting each other, they felt their futures in their dreams somewhat stripped away and left empty-handed. Yet they remained faithful. And the Lord rewarded them!

Married love is meant to be a gospel!  Gospel of Christ: dying to self, submitting to the Father's Will for our lives, will ultimately lead us through the Cross to a New Life that is fuller than was ever possible before.

Big brothers are supposed to protect her sisters from bad guys. I feel I have been a bit negligent of that for my sisters, but they done just a fine job. The only real test I have had of Matt was this: is this guy crazy enough to risk freezing to death in order to watch Notre Dame football? He passed: he is that crazy. And that tinge of crazy in him is a good thing.  You see, marriage requires a bit of insanity if it's going to work. You have to love the other person so much that you are ready to give them everything, starting with yourself, your entire person. But when I realized that he loves my sister with that same craziness, that same reckless abandon, then I knew they had something.  That's why the cross and the Eucharist are the true shape and form of love! (Cross held during vows) As Saint Paul reminded us today in Ephesians, Jesus doesn't hold anything back from His bride the Church: he loved her and gave himself up for her. Look at how crazy love this!  Look at how madly God is in love with us!

Marriage means so much more than what our society thinks it means.  We have so often reduced it to the least common denominator, and done it again and again and again, but now it looks very different from its true form in God's original plan.  With the way civil laws have developed over the past few decades , it now seems that marriage is only about me: how does this person satisfy my plans for my future, my happiness, my goals.  But as we see in St. Paul, it's supposed to be about the other person, and about Jesus.  Matt and Katie understand this, and that is why when they were dating and talking about marriage, they saw the big picture, which Matt even mentioned when he proposed on Christmas eve: they want to get each other to heaven.

Matt and Katie, in just a few moments you will be married.  Then the first thing you will do as husband and wife will be to pray at Mass together, to witness the only true definition of love in the Lord's Cross made present to us on this altar, and to receive the gift of the Eucharist that should define and shape your entire life and fuel your hearts to love more fully every day.  Tomorrow's Mass has for its Gospel the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, the only miracle remembered in all four Gospels, and is seen as a mystery of the Eucharist.  Jesus satisfies all of us, and we are called like the apostles to receive from Him and to give to hungry hearts and souls.  If you stay close to Jesus, your marriage will overflow.  Your love will abundantly bear fruit, as the Gospel always does, in the hearts of the people you meet, the lives you touch.  We pray of course for many children as well, but we are certain that the fruitfulness will be there for those who are faithful, more often in ways that we cannot see than in ways that are visible to the history books.  Thank you for your yes today, and may Jesus renew and strengthen that yes in your hearts every time you meet Him in the Eucharist.  Amen.